Monday, December 20, 2010

The Lord's Resistance Army's Christmas

A former Roman Catholic altar boy. Who absorbed the Christian message of tolerance and love for his fellow man to heart, in a singular manner. He is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Joseph Kony sees himself as a Christian liberator. His view of Christianity and of himself as a representative of it is quite outstanding. He makes Charles Taylor look like a gentle, unassuming champion of his people.

Kony's tormented view of Christianity demonstrates a kind of human evil that is difficult to comprehend. He and his LRA leaders represent the first people to be indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir it is doubtful whether he will ever be apprehended, held to account for his incredible crimes against humanity and sentenced.

He has spent 22 years spreading terror in Uganda, which thought it knew terror under Idi Amin. Mass murders, kidnappings, homelessness has marked his reign of terror. But more, the abduction of children, to force them to become unwavering murderers, stealing away their humanity and re-making them into murderous automatons, for fear of their own lives.

Africa's tribal rivalries, its incessant clan clashes and violent upheavals look trivial in comparison to the massive events of inhuman suffering that have been imposed on Central Africa through attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army. Kony visualizes his very specific type of theocracy, through his very own interpretation of the Bible's Ten Commandments.

His child soldiers do his bidding, killing, maiming, torturing, raping and abducting their unfortunate victims. There is no compassion, no pity, no conscience, for the child soldiers were never able to experience any of those human emotions extended toward themselves. They live to kill on orders of Kony, or they die at his orders.

Kony and his LRA are in 'good company', next door to Democratic Republic of the Congo, with its Hutu militias executing their countless enemies, and Sudan, where another civil war looms on the near horizon. And with the close approach of Christmas, fearful villages wonder which of them will next be targeted, in Sudan, the DRC, Central African Republic.

"It's unbelievable that world leaders continue to tolerate brutal violence against some of the most isolated villages in central Africa."Marcel Stoessel, Oxfam

This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.